STATE TOUTS REFORM FOR RETARDED

Rudolph UngerCHICAGO TRIBUNE

The state has substantially reduced the number of mentally retarded people improperly housed in mental hospitals in the last year, according to the director of the Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities.

In court testimony last week, Michael Belletire also said he has ordered an immediate increase in the number of beds at a south suburban unit for the developmentally disabled to facilitate the transfer of nine more retarded people in facilities for the mentally ill.

Belletire was ordered to appear Friday before Associate Judge Marjan Staniec of Cook County Circuit Court to determine how many retarded patients have been misplaced in the state hospital system. Under state law, mentally retarded people are not supposed to be placed in facilities for the mentally ill.

On May 10, Staniec demanded ''a statewide accounting'' of such misplaced people after hearing the case of a 32-year-old, moderately retarded Chicago woman who had been held in the Tinley Park Mental Health Center for 15 months. Staniec previously ordered the state to transfer her to a unit where she could receive proper treatment for her disability.

At Friday`s hearing, the judge waved documents representing 19 other patients whose cases are before him and told Belletire, ''These cases are all suspect also.''

The state Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Code, which governs placement and treatment of the mentally ill and retarded, provides that the two groups be housed separately. According to mental health officials, the provision is necessary to protect more vulnerable retarded people from mentally ill patients.

But Belletire said strict definitions under state law for placement contribute to the problem, because ''it is easier to get persons into mental illness units than it is to get them into developmental disability facilities, and it may take a law to change this situation.''

He also said some private nursing homes dump retarded patients who become disruptive into mental hospitals.

Belletire said he ordered the removal of the retarded from units for the mentally ill when he took over the state mental health agency two years ago.

In the last year, 85 retarded people have been removed from mental hospitals at Elgin and Manteno, where they had been sent because staff did not follow ''the proper diagnostic procedure to determine the problems and rehabilitation needs of the patients,'' Belletire said.

He said he issued a departmental directive last week calling for staff compliance with state law requiring prompt and accurate diagnoses.

''There frequently is resistance on the part of the developmental units to taking patients and, short of a court order, they cannot be compelled to take them,'' he said.

At an earlier hearing before Staniec in the case of the Chicago woman, mental health workers at Tinley Park testified they were unable to move the patient to a department facility for the retarded until they took the unusual step of going to court.

Though admitting that he was not familiar with the specifics of the case, Belletire told Staniec that the woman had a state guardian who apparently had not pressed for her transfer.

But Roger Derstine of the State Guardianship and Advocacy Commission responded: ''Are you aware that our office sought the woman`s transfer in both May and December of last year?

''Are you aware that Dr. Daniel Luchins, a psychiatrist at Tinley Park, wrote a memo last September in which he stated, `I have never thought this patient to be psychotic but rather that her behavior was the result of her retardation`? ''

He said the state plans to place all retarded patients at the Howe Developmental Center, which houses 726 developmentally disabled residents and where he ordered an increase in the number of beds. Howe is under investigation by state and local law enforcement authorities regarding the April 28 death of a 25-year-old retarded patient.